This invention relates to a bill accepting device employed in a vending machine and a bill exchanging machine and also to a method for controlling accepting of bills.
A bill accepting device comprises at least a bill discrimination device having a function of discriminating a true bill from a false one among inserted bills and accepting a true bill and returning a false one and a receiving device for receiving accepted bills. For returning a once accepted bill when required, the receiving device must be composed of a temporary retention device, i.e., escrow device and, in this case, the escrow device must have a further storing device, i.e., stocker device for storing bills which have exceeded a number which can be received. The specification of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 498,841 discloses a prior art bill accepting device of such type. This prior art bill accepting device disclosed therein requires bifurcating passages for guiding a bill accepted by the bill discrimination device selectively to the escrow device or the stocker device and also requires switching means for switching a sort-out direction in the bifurcating passage. This necessitates the parallel arrangement of the escrow device and the stocker device along the two bifurcating passages resulting in a bulky structure of the vending machine as a whole. There is further the problem that an inaccurate switching control in the bifurcating passage may cause malfunction of the device.
It is, therefore, an object of the present invention to realize a compact design of the device and accuracy in the bill control by providing a novel bill accepting device capable of receiving a bill selectively in the escrow device or the stocker device without provision of the bifurcating passages.
In the construction in which both the escrow device and the stocker device are provided, a control operation is made such that inserted bills are normally received in the escrow device and received in the stocker device only when the escrow device has become full. Such a simple control, however, causes inconvenience in a case where bills of plural denominations are handled. Assume, for example, that inserted bills are received in the escrow device indiscriminately without considering the denomination. This will cause no inconvenience in a case where an inserted bill per se is automatically returned. If, however, a bill of a small denomination is to be paid out of the escrow device for change, this is impossible because bills of various denominations are received quite irregularly in the escrow device. Again, if an inserted bill is received in the stocker device unconditionally when the escrow device is full, there is no certainty as to what denomination of bill will be paid out of the escrow device in case the inserted bill is to be returned so that it is not possible to return accurately a bill of the same amount as the inserted bill.
It is, therefore, another object of the invention to provide a method for controlling accepting of bills enabling accepting and processing of bills of plural denominations without any inconvenience in a bill accepting device including a bill discrimination section for discriminating whether an inserted bill is true or not, an escrow section capable of retaining a bill in a state in which it can be automatically returned and a stocker section for retaining a bill in a state in which it cannot be automatically returned. More specifically, it is an object of the invention to automatically return a bill of the same denomination as the inserted bill whatever the denomination of the inserted bill may be and also to pay out a bill of a predetermined small denomination for change.
It is still another object of the invention to provide a bill accepting device capable of receiving a large number of bills and yet having a compact design.